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On second thought: Congress drops talk of staying, takes August recess

WASHINGTON – Senate leaders, backed by vocal conservatives in the
House, vowed at the height of the health care debate to trim the usual
month-long August recess and stay until at least the middle of the month
to work on pressing legislation.

The middle of the month being Aug. 3, apparently.

The Senate gaveled out shortly after noon Thursday and won’t be back
until Sept. 5 – when, in addition to health care, they will face a
defense budget, the debt ceiling and calls for tax reform. House leaders
never seriously considered staying and left for their home districts
last week.

The retreat represents a “missed opportunity” for Republicans after
seven months of controlling both chambers of Congress and the White
House, said one analyst.

“Republicans wanted this session of Congress to be more productive
than it’s been,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s
Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “The
failure of healthcare in the Senate is a big setback for them, although I
just feel like people have declared this thing dead in the House and
Senate a dozen times already.”

The desire to get something done was behind the push by some Republicans to delay or eliminate the recess entirely.

“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to enact these
transformative policies, so Congress should respond in a
once-in-a-generation manner,” said Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Gilbert, in a June letter
urging House Speaker Paul Ryan to cancel recess this year. That letter
was signed by 11 others, including Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Prescott.

Biggs also wrote a column for Fox, in which he called the recess a “luxury” that the House cannot afford this year.

The House did manage to pass a bill that overhauled the Affordable
Care Act, or Obamacare, making good on a promise Republicans have made
since the bill was first passed seven years ago.

But repeated attempts to get some version of a repeal or replacement of the ACA through the Senate ended with thumbs-down
from Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, in the early-morning hours of July
28. McCain joined two other Republicans and all 48 Senate Democrats to
doom the bill.

Jason Rose, a Scottsdale-based Republican political consultant, called the legislative defeats “dispiriting.”

He said being a Republican after this tumultuous summer feels like
being “a United Airlines employee after a certain video came out,”
referencing an incident in which police forcibly removed a passenger
from an overbooked flight in April. Cell phone videos of the incident
sparked a public relations nightmare for the company.

Rose said a series of unforced errors by President Donald Trump had muddied the waters and left Americans frustrated.

“The body politic is just not buying into his shtick right now,” he said of Trump.

Kondik agreed that public patience with this latest round of Washington drama may be wearing thin.

“There’s only so much time to do these things, and I think the closer
you get to an election, the less interest there is in doing politically
unpalatable things,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said during one of the early
rounds of the health care fight that the Senate would delay its recess
for at least two weeks to work on health care and other measures. That
action drew praise from Biggs.

“The American people entrusted us with the House, Senate, and White
House because of the promises we made to them,” Biggs said in a
statement then. “The American people will not tolerate any more excuses
for work left undone or half-done, and I am committed to staying in
session as long as it takes to accomplish our goals.”

Even after the health care vote failed, a beleaguered McConnell said
the Senate would stay and turn its attention to other matters. But after
a week in which it mostly approved presidential nominees, the senators
left for home Thursday.

Lawmakers could not be reached for comment on the schedule change Friday – they were all out of town.

Cronkite News reporter J.T. Lain contributed to this report.

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Congress has gone home for its regular monthly August recess – after talking about a delay – but faces a long list of work when it comes back after Labor Day, including health care, tax reform, the defense budget and the debt ceiling.

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